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Sunday, June 12, 2016

ABP 2016: Week 9

The
last week at Muraviovka Park was grey and cold, and almost every day
we had some rain – very unusual for this time of the year. Despite
the bad weather conditions, we were able to trap a sufficient number
of Brown ShrikesLanius cristatus and Siberian
RubythroatsLuscinia calliope. In total, twenty
individuals were equipped with geolocators by Anders and Kasper. This
is not the first time that Rubythroats were tagged at Muraviovka Park
– twelve birds were marked with loggers already in 2015. Four of
these were recaptured this year, but all of them had lost their
valuable tag. We had to learn that the harness material used before
was not durable enough to keep the geolocator for one year on a
birds´s back. Luckily, we already used another material for our
Yellow-breasted Buntings Emberiza aureola. By the way:
they have started to breed now, the first nests have been found and
breeding success will be monitored with temperature loggers to avoid
disturbance. Sadly, our two Danish companions and Arend had to leave
us during the last week. Many thanks for your help, guys!

But
not only the weather was unusual – we also trapped some really
strange birds. The insect-like voice of the Chinese Bush WarblerBradypterus tacsanowskius can be heard at the Park annually
during breeding season, but now we got an individual in our nets for
the very first time! The calls of the rails here can be a challenging
as well. Eastern Water Rail Rallus indicus,Baillon´s CrakePorzana pusillaand
Band-bellied Crake Porzana paykulli are regular
inhabitants of the wet meadows, and last week we also found the first
Common Moorhens Gallinula chloropus. This species
recently colonized the area – see here. The status of the poorly
known Swinhoe´s RailCoturnicops exquisitus, however,
was always questioned. Only once we observed a bird in June 2013 (see
here), and in June 2015 Sergei Smirenski found another one. In
addition, a yet undescribed rail-like call was heard more or less
regularly since 2013 in sedge meadows. This mystery is solved now:
The “call” is an unknown song of the threatened Swinhoe´s Rail!
We observed one individual, made sound recordings and yesterday Tom
finally trapped one bird with its own voice – probably the first
individual of this secretive species to be ringed in Russia. A
recording of a call made by Alex is now available on xeno-canto.org,
the first recording of Swinhoe´s Rail available in the internet. We
will publish Tom´s recording of the song with a thorough description
later. So excited!

1 comment:

Congratulations on those Swinhoe's Rail cuts. I happened to be updating the HBW Alive account for the species and have included them as the first available recordings http://www.hbw.com/species/swinhoes-rail-coturnicops-exquisitus. Great work!

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